I didn't really feel like getting up this morning. So I just kept still and relaxed in
bed, slowly becoming aware of why I felt that way. I noticed that my arms, from the elbows to the end of my fingers, had a funny sensation,
like someone squeezing me there with a pair of pliers. I knew it wasn't my wife next to me. She was snoring. Also my feet, when I
moved them around, felt like weights were attached at my ankles. Since lately I had started to ride my bike again each morning, hoping
that some exercise would make me feel better, I wondered if I would take a ride today. Probably not.
After about 40 minutes of fidgeting in bed, I knew I wouldn't likely fall back to sleep, so I raised my feet in the air and swung
my body into a sitting up position. It was 3:30 A.M. I sat there on the side of the bed for maybe 10 minutes, trying to understand
why I couldn't just pop up out of bed and enthusiastically greet the new day, like I used to. It felt good just to sit there. But
eventually I arose, as if from the dead, slowly but surely.
Yesterday I had planted some
vincas in some old patio pots I had on hand, digging around in some mulch and wetting them down for the transplanting. That took some
bending and kneeling, things I'm not so good at anymore. Today I was still feeling some of the aches from that effort. I had thought
about that when I was sitting on the side of the bed earlier.
Might as well move on, I
thought, so I pulled my short pants on and struggled get into my sandals, having to bend over, stick my finger under the straps and
slip my feet in them. I stood up and weaved down the hall and started to feel more alive, and then into the kitchen to put the coffee
pot on. First things first.
When I finished the morning's chores, looking out on the driveway
I noticed the morning paper hadn't been delivered yet, so I elected to scan the news briefly on the web. No good news there, I decided,
so I deleted that in a hurry. But one article just barely caught my eye before it closed down. Or maybe I was imagining things. It
read, "Hey everybody, it was actually Adam and Adam. There was no Eve." Well, that about did it. I'd heard it all, I thought. I didn't
think I could take any more. Enough is enough. So I called up and cancelled my daily newspaper, along with AOL and Verizon, and threw
my TV and computer out the back door into a sand pit in the desert where I live. Then and there I decided not to read about, or watch,
or listen to the daily dose of trials, tribulations, falsehoods, of LGBT's, minorities, immigrants, Supreme Court justices, same-sex
marriage, Hillary Clinton, Donald trump, Obamacare, hackers, government graft, political corruption, ID thieves, wars, police beatings
and killings, rioters, racism, cheating athletes, groping priests, child molesters, hate crimes, the homeless, gun control, terrorism,
global warming, bullying, or any of the rest of the daily bad news spewed out by the media. Therefore I have vowed a news blackout.
How long It'll last I don't know, but it's certainly worth a try. Maybe then I won't resist getting out of bed in the morning, who
knows, maybe I just won't.

For a fleeting moment today I wondered about something I've
thought about many times. Maybe there's no connection with my decision to try to avoid daily U.S. pessimistic news reports, I might
even say fear them, but maybe there is. I asked myself, or maybe I was calling on a higher authority, "God, did you have to make the
World this way? If you made us in your image, do you have daily struggles with the events in your universe, like we humans do? Wouldn't
it have been just as easy for you to make us into honest, loving, considerate and peaceful beings, full of brotherly love? Healthy
all of our days on Earth. Was a "free will" really a good idea, knowing ahead of time, as they say you know all things, how we would
choose? I have heard that the Lord moves in strange ways, but since you had the power to make us earthlings anyway you chose, do you
think you made the best of all possible choices? Do I have a right to ask? Is there any way we can have a "do-over?" I mean, c'mon,
I don't intend to criticize, or blame, but really, is this the best it could have been? Is it some kind of game? Or is the best yet
to come? If it is, I hope it's sooner rather than later. Look around, maybe it's already too late.